In real world welding and training, a weldment may be subjected to a destructive test and/or a non-destructive test. Such tests help to determine the quality of the weldment and, therefore, the ability of the welder. Unfortunately, certain types of non-destructive tests such as, for example, X-ray radiographic testing, can require expensive test equipment and it can be time consuming to perform the tests. Furthermore, destructive tests, by definition, destroy the weldment. As a result, the weldment can only be tested once in a destructive test. Also, a large gap exists in the industry between making a weldment and knowing if the weld is a good weld. Welding inspection training often relies on such destructive and non-destructive tests to properly train a welding inspector to determine how good or bad a weldment may be. The American Welding Standard (AWS), as well as other welding standard bodies, provides visual inspection standards that set criterion as to the types and levels of discontinuities and defects that are allowed in a particular type of weldment.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional, traditional, and proposed approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such approaches with embodiments of the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.